Why Cross-Platform Design Is the New Key to App Longevity

The cross-platform mobile development market has expanded to over $7.5 billion. There’s a huge demand for multi-platform-ready branding. Whether it’s a new app, SaaS, or enhancing a brick-and-mortar business: the more the merrier.

In order to get the most from all major platforms, developers recommend building them alongside each other. Normally, this is a long and R&D intensive process. Cross-platform development design looks to keep things in order while trimming the fat.

Here’s how to make sure all platform designs are executed beautifully.

Use a Universal Identity

Consistency is a key obstacle to overcome when dealing with multi-platform branding. Developers and designers must be on the same page or things will look out of place. Utilizing a custom system that defines key elements and rules helps establish a universal identity.

Typography, logos, colour pallets, and UI elements are some primary aspects of identity. These things have to be consistent across all platforms. The best way of accomplishing this is to use a universal blueprint across all design platforms and systems.

Prioritize Content Delivery

It’s hard to design across multiple platforms when you only have graphics and placeholders. Develop content that is shareable across your network. Once you have a nice handful of mixed media content, you can design templates.

This is important for refining your code and avoiding confusing development processes, a-la Google Flutter. Cross-platform development often runs into the “chicken before the egg” dilemmas. A lot of stuff can get built in a short period of time, but it may not all get used.

Things can easily get lost in translation, especially if your brand has a lot of IPs or services.

Responsive and Common Sense Design

Don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal for multi-platform design: ease of use. Responsive web design changed the game for web designing with a purpose. Making everything legible and UI easy to read saved a lot of headaches.

With cross-platform design, you have to make sure you leave some customizability on the table. Preferences differ by the device, screen size, and shopping habits. This is worth keeping in mind when streamlining the design processes.

Cross-Platform Teams

There’s a lot of planning that still goes into cross-platform design. The process is expedited once you’re able to nail down your universal visual design. Devs are coding faster and your investment becomes a lot more transparent.

As a designer, prototypes get tested alongside all platforms. No more having to redesign templates to replicate an old layout. Google translate can test how your international customers read your content.

Developers will need less code, overall. Most platforms can reuse Javascript for all the behind-the-scenes custom scripts. You technically only need one engineer to execute a cross-platform plan and scale it in the future.

If you need some examples of what a seamless cross-platform experience looks like, check out our work. Our team has built numerous successful digital brands.

Get the complete package with Expect Best’s multi-dimensional design services.